Inventory of a Borrowed House

The kettle remembers a hand that is not mine, its handle worn smooth to the shape of someone leaving. I drink from cups whose chips I did not make, and the floor learns my weight slowly, the way snow accepts a footprint it intends to forget.

At night the radiator speaks in a stranger's morse, ticking out the names of all its former tenants. I answer with the small geography of unpacking— a toothbrush, a book face-down, a single lamp holding back the dark like a held breath.

The window frames a tree I will not see in autumn. Already I am rehearsing the leaving, folding the rooms back into their plain dimensions, returning the silence I found here, washed and dried and stacked among the unfamiliar plates.

Still, for a while, the light falls where I want it. The walls keep what I tell them and ask nothing. And when I go, I will leave the house a little warmer— a ghost of steam, a dent in the pillow, the kettle, again, learning a new hand.